I shrugged. "Is that why you were at the funeral?

  Did you know?"

  Erek nodded. "I knew. I might have been able to save her... if."

  I met his gaze. "Too late to save her," I said. "But payback is going to be very painful for those filthy slugs."

  On the way home, we filled Rachel and

  Tobias in on what had happened. It

  took a while. We were back at Cassie's barn before we were done.

  "I say do it," Rachel said. "That Chee guy held onto me like I was a baby. They're strong. They have technology we don't. They've already penetrated The Sharing. They would double our chances. End of story."

  "No,

  not

  end of story," Cassie said, contradicting her friend.

  "What right do we have to interfere and destroy the thousands of years of peace this species has had? Didn't you hear Maria? No Chee has ever taken another life. You

  want them to be saying a thousand years from now that no Chee ever took a life till

  we

  made them killers?"

  I rounded on her, angry. "What I don't want a thousand years from now is for people to be saying, Too bad about the humans. They ended up as dead as the Pemalites.""

  "Ax?" Jake asked. "You haven't said much." Ax was in human morph, of course, since we were in the barn. "As you know, we Andalites are not supposed to interfere in the lives of other species. I am already breaking that law with you. And I am proud to be breaking that law in this case. But the Chee . . . Chee! It makes a funny sound, doesn't it? Chee." He smiled with his human mouth, then grew serious again. "The Chee are a different species. Older than Andalites. I

  feel . . . badly . . . helping another

  species to become violent."

  Rachel said, "Look, no one likes violence. All right? But we didn't ask for this war with the Yeerks. When the bad guys come after you, when they

  start the violence, they leave you no choice: fight or die."

  "Fight or die," I agreed. "And you want proof? Look at the Pemalites. They didn't

  fight, they died. All gone. No more. Scratch a whole species. Now their 'essence," whatever that means, is stuck inside dogs, and their robots feed them

  extra kibble. Yippee. That worked out real well for them. And even that's better off than we'll be if we lose to the Yeerks."

  "Law of the jungle," Rachel said.

  "You eat or you get eaten."

  Tobias said,

  speaking up for the first time.
  law?>

  "How can you take that attitude?" I demanded.

  "You're a predator. You know how it is."

 
  That doesn't mean I like it. Look, the

  Pemalites were wiped out, maybe because they didn't fight. Maybe they'd have lost even if they had fought. We'll never know. But the Chee have lived for thousands of years. I know they're androids, but they're a species, too. They've survived without killing. Doesn't something about that make you jealous?

  Don't you wish we could say the same? Don't you wish Homo sapiens could face the universe and honestly say, "We do not kill? We don't enslave. We don't make war"?>

  "I don't make the rules," I said. "I didn't start this war. Humans didn't start this war. Look, I don't want to make this

  personal, but I know the name Matcom. My dad is involved in some work with them. And the other day Tom

  ..." I shot a glance at Jake.

  "His brother was on me to come to The Sharing and bring my father. The Sharing

  is targeting my dad, and now we know why. So for me, it's simple: If we take this Pemalite

  crystal,

  maybe my dad isn't involved with Matcom any more. And maybe the Yeerks find someone else to infest."

  No one had an answer to that. I knew they

  wouldn't.

  Cassie walked down to the far end of the barn and came back carrying a small cage.

  "Total darkness, can't touch walls, floor, or ceiling, and you have to travel through a room strung with sensitive wires you can't even see." She held up the cage. "Meet the animal that can do all that."

  It was no larger than a small rat with its leathery wings folded back.

  "Cool," I said. "First I'm Spiderman, now I

  get to be Batman."

  I thought for once we'd get a chance to practice with the bat morph. We were planning to go after the Pemalite crystal the next weekend.

  Plenty of time to plan and prepare.

  Yeah, right.

  "Marco?" My dad yelled up the stairs to my room, where I was desperately trying to figure out some math homework.

  "Yeah?"

  "Phone."

  ""X" equals point oh-three-nine," I reminded myself so I wouldn't lose my place. I went out into the hall to grab the upstairs phone.

  "Point oh-three-nine. Yeah, who is it?"

  "Hi, Marco. It's me, Erek."

  "Oh, hi, Erek, what's up?" I hoped he would remember our phones could be bugged.

  "Not much," he said, sounding very convincingly human.

  "I was just thinking, though, you know that thing we were going to do next weekend? Why don't we just do it tonight instead?"

  I knew what the "thing" was. And I knew Erek wasn't calling on a whim. Something had gone wrong. I swallowed my heart, which had jumped up into my throat. "Okay. Maybe I'll call Jake and see if he wants to do it, too."

  "That'd be excellent," Erek said. "Later, man."

  I hung up the phone and thought seriously about pretending I hadn't gotten the call. I mean, I wanted to do this. It was important, life and death. But it was like something out of

  Mis

  sion: Impossible.

  And without planning or practice, it was beyond impossible.

  Plus, I had homework to do.

  I picked up the phone and called Jake. Four hours later, with all of our parents asleep in their beds, we met at Cassie's barn. All of us,

  including Ax. Erek arrived last.

  He didn't waste time with small talk.

  "There's a problem. The Yeerks are putting in a brand new security system on top of the existing systems. I don't think it's active yet, but I can't find out what it is."

 
  till you can get the details.> Tobias

  said.

  "The crystal is already so well protected that any new system may put it beyond our grasp for good," Erek said. "And don't forget --the Yeerks are racing to use this crystal to create a

  computer system so powerful it can take over every computer on Earth. They're not there yet. But the longer we wait. . ."

  "Oh, man, this sucks," I said. "No planning? No preparation? Just go in and hope for the best?"

  "I'll tell you everything I know," Erek said.

  "Listen carefully. It's not too complicated." For a few seconds we sort of teetered on the edge. We weren't sure what to do. Erek wanted us to go in, obviously. But he had his own interests, which might not be the same as ours.

  It was the worst possible situation. Any one of our parents could wake up and discover we were not at home. That would mean frantic phone calls back and forth from our folks to our friends' parents, calls to the cops, probably search teams out beating the woods.

  "Go or don't go?" Jake asked.

  "Go," Rachel said, but with less enthusiasm than usual. A lot less.

  "Go," I said. "But personally, I can't blame anyone who wants to sit this one out." Cassie gave me a dirty look. I guess

  she took

  it personally. "I say go," she said. "I don't sit

  anything out, Marco."

  Tobias said.

 
  on this mission, so I don't vote.>

 
  goes.> Ax said.

  "Don't call me "prince,"" Jake said wearily for the thousandth time. "Okay, we go." Erek immediately began telling us all he knew about Matcom and the security for the Pemalite crystal. After about two minutes I was ready to

  change my vote.

  But by then it was too late. We'd made our

  decision, and it was as if we were being swept toward a waterfall

  like a bunch of canoeists

  who'd lost their last paddle. We'd survive

  ...

  or

  not

  ...

  but one thing was sure. We were definitely going over the edge.

  "Q rek was not going with us. But he would be waiting outside Matcom when we came out. Assuming we came out.

  We flew from Cassie's barn to the Matcom

  building. It was one of those boring-looking, three-story glass and cement buildings you see in industrial parks everywhere. Just a bunch of blue glass rectangles with a big parking lot in back. In fact, it looked so much like every other bor ing square building in the industrial park, we had trouble finding it. We flew around, a lost gang of owls, for a good fifteen minutes before Rachel spotted the Matcom sign.

  We landed on the roof of the building. Erek had assured us there were no cameras or guards up there.

  "Let's find that pipe," Jake whispered as soon as we were all human again. Or, in Ax's case, Andalite.

  "Erek said southwest corner, right?" I said.

  "Astost8st8west," Cassie said.

  She sounded sure, so I decided to agree.

  "Yeah, that was it. Which way is northwest?" Ax laughed in thought-speak, till he realized I was serious.
  directions?> He sounded shocked. Like

  he'd just discovered we had hidden tail blades.

 
  there.>

  The pipe was about three inches in diameter.

  "I hope this works," I said. "I don't even know if my Spiderman can make silk."

  "Spiderwoman," Cassie said. "Your spider morph is female. Wolf spiders don't make

  webs, but they do make silk. It should work."

  "Easy for you say. I don't even know how to turn on the silk thing."

  But Ax was already morphing into the wolf spider, so I hurried to catch up. By the time Ax

  and I were in spider morph, the others had all be come cockroaches.

 
  scale.> Rachel said.

 
  you

  look like right now? You look like

  dinner.> I said, laughing evilly.

 
  is hungry, and you look tasty.>

 

  Jake said patiently.

 
  butt.> Rachel growled.

  From where I was standing in the gravel of the rooftop, the pipe looked like a round skyscraper. It extended above the roof by about a foot, which is quite a distance when you're half an inch high.

  I scampered around the pipe. One side had been splashed with tar. It would be easy to grip. I raced easily up the pipe to stand precariously on the lip.

  I could feel a breeze blowing up from the blackness beneath me. It was like standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon. The pipe went down through all three stories and an extra underground story. Four floors. Bad enough when you're human size. A million miles when you're a spider.

  Ax came crawling up to teeter alongside me.

  <0ooookay.> I said.

 

  I tried to search the spider brain, looking for the subtle, secret signals that would start me spinning silk.

  Fortunately, the spider wasn't exactly

  Albert Einstein. It only knew how to do about four things, one of which was spin silk.

  The spider body sort of... well ... pushed out a strand of gooey white filament. It stuck to the edge of the pipe.

  Ax did the same.

 
  disgusting.> I said.
  Ax?>

 

 
  Yeeeeee-Haaaaahhh!>

  I sprang from the lip of the pipe into the darkness. It was so totally Spiderman.

  I fell slowly down, down, down, twisting and turning my way down the pipe. Behind me a long white string grew. It braked my fall, so that I was dropping in slow motion. The spider eyes were not bad at seeing in the relative dark. A bit of moonlight followed us down part of the way as we dropped.

  And then it started being fun. I kicked away from the side of the pipe and cartwheeled through the air. My web looped around Ax's, and soon we were weaving a weird silk rope.

  It was cool in a way . . . till I felt a

  certain emptiness.

 

 

 
  dropped?>

 

  I said.

 
  flaw.> Ax said with his usual understatement.

 
  creatures. We should survive a fall. So should the others in cockroach morph.>

 
  there's only one way to find out if we'll

  survive. By dropping.>

  Ax didn't say anything.

  <0h, man.> I groaned.

  I cut the strand of web.

  And I fell. Down through the darkness, toward a landing I could only hope wouldn't kill me. It was a long drop.

 

 

  WHAP! WHAP!

  We hit something hard. We bounced. We hit again.

  WHAP! WHAP!

  Jake called

  down.

  <0h, yeah, I'm great.>

  I said.
  and landed on a steel trampoline. Couldn't be better.>

  Rachel commented

  coolly.

 
  how much you laugh when it's

  your

  turn.>

  The plan was for Ax and me to create a silk cable the others in cockroach morph would be able

  to climb down. That way, they wouldn't all have to go spider. Not that it would have helped, anyway.

  Jake

  said.
  Nothing kills a cockroach.>

  Rachel suggested.
  seconds later, after they had clambered down to the end of our silk . . .

  WHAP! WHAP! WHAP! Three cockroaches

  landed nearby.

  Jake

  asked.

 
  knows?> I answered.
  heatingstair-conditioning vent, I guess. Erek said it would be part of the furnace system. Supposedly we go west a hundred feet or so, then drop down, then go across the furnace, then down again, then right. Then we're at the edge of the High Security Room, where the real trouble starts.>

 
  say furnace?> Cassie asked.

 

 
  furnace might actually come on?>

  Cassie said.

 

  I said.

 

  Rachel pointed out.

  <0kay, I've

  seriously

  changed my mind.> I said. Of course, no one listened to me. We scrabbled along the steel floor, two spiders and three cockroaches. Our rough claws seemed to make a horrible din on the metal, scuffing and scratching. But it probably wouldn't have sounded like anything to a human.

  As we ran, there was more and more dust on the floor of the vent. It was weird, like walking through dried leaves. My eight legs kicked through it, and it swirled behind me as I passed. Eventually the dust became as thick as a carpet, although in reality it was probably no more than a few

  millimeters thick.

  Every ten feet or so there would be a grilled opening. Through the massive upright bars I could see offices. The light in the offices was very dim, just the glow of computer screen savers and red or green function lights. But it helped us to find our way through the darkness of the vent.

  Then . . .

  Rachel

  yelled. She was the farthest back.
  Something big!>

  She took off. I took off. We all took

  off.

  Now I could feel the vibrations, too. Quick, confused-sounding footsteps. And a dragging sound, like something was being hauled.

  I ran. To my left, another spider. Ax.

  Ahead of

  me, two roaches, almost as big as I was.

  Rachel

  was just back to my right.

  I couldn't exactly turn and glance over my

  shoulder. I had no shoulder. And I had no

  actual head to turn. So I paused,

  spun around, and in

  the dim light from a vent, I saw it.

  Huge. Twenty times my size! A vast,

  horrible

  menace.

 

  I yelled.

  The thing I'd heard dragging was its naked tail and furred abdomen. It was hungry, and it was after us. And, unfortunately, it was faster than me.

 
  gaining!> I yelled.

  We blew at top spider and cockroach speed.

  Which seems really fast when you're an inch long, but isn't really that many miles per hour. A rat can do maybe five or six miles per hour. A spider is lucky to break one mph.

 

  Jake said.

  Cassie

  cried.
  room.>

  Jake said.

 

  The next vent was about ten feet away. I

  couldn't turn around to look at the rat, but every hair on my spider body told me it was just inches behind me.

  Yet there was something else making my hair tingle, too. Something about the breeze . . .

 

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